Windows XP/Service packs
Windows XP has three main service packs and three additional service packs. These were released by Microsoft to fix issues and other problems. Service Pack 4 was never made; Thevmedia made one, Thevmedia XP Service Pack 4, which continues as 5 and 5.5. Thevmedia's service packs mostly remove a few features and Internet Explorer 6, the XP web browser that "got arrested" by many users. List of removed features from the RTM version or a Service Pack Wikipedia page about these service packs. Information below was taken from the Removed features page Service Pack 1, 2b and 2c are not documented here because they have no "known" removed features. If they do have, add them here. Service Pack 1a * Microsoft Java Virtual Machine from Service Pack 1 was removed as a result of a lawsuit with Sun Microsystems. Service Pack 2 * The number of TCP half-open connections was restricted. * Raw socket suppot was mostly removed. * Program Mananger is no longer usable as it is now a stub. * Background message compaction is removed from the bundled version of Outlook Express. Also, while it was possible to disable this feature, it's replacement, which compacts messages every hundredth time the program is run, cannot be. * The Media Bar, which replaced Radio Toolbar in Internet Explorer 6, is not available in the bundled version of Internet Explorer 6. Windows Media Player 8 was upgraded to Windows Media Player 9. The following features were not in WMP9 through pre-installed SP2: * Musical Colors (possibly because of wide-screen problems and other issues Microsoft and others could not handle) * A lot of skins. (They can be downloaded from the web should the user do so, but not all are downloadable at the moment.) * David Byrne - Like Humans Do (radio edit). Other changes to Windows Media Player: * Spike is no longer red. The skin mode was not changed. * Bars has received color tone changes. Skin mode undo:s the change. * The default preset is no longer Water; it is Bars. * The ability to see the lyrics of a song was removed. It is still possible to do so but the user needs to download a lyrics plug-in from the web. Service Pack 3 * The Address bar toolbar on the taskbar was removed for legal reasons, according to Microsoft. Windows Desktop Search is touted as a replacement. * The Energy Star logo in the Display Properties dialog was removed. * The ability to install service packs cumulatively is no longer available in Service Pack 3 as it requires at least Service Pack 1 to be installed first (Service Pack 2 in the cases of the original Windows XP Media Center Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2003). Cumulative slipstreaming is still possible, however, and Microsoft has confirmed that it is supported. * The option to display the special Internet Explorer icon on the desktop was removed. Thevmedia XP Service Pack 4 This service pack was only released in Yurka. It removed a few leftovers from a few features removed in the Service Packs and did some other changes: * The Address bar in Windows Explorer (as well as the option to make it appear on the screen) was removed as well as everything that has to do with it. * The Windows Media Player 8 tour was removed because Windows Media Player 8 is no longer included with Windows XP as of Service Pack 2. The Windows XP Tour was edited to remove Windows Media Player 8. * All applications that are stubs or that were always broken were removed. PROGMAN is not affected by this. * The old Windows logo is now completely removed on anything, including Winddings and conime.exe. * All icons that were not updated for Windows XP were removed. For the used ones, they were replaced by another icons. Thevmedia XP Service Pack 5 This service pack was only released in Yurka, like the previous one. This service pack included a text document called "xpsupportto2014.txt". Opening it reveals this: We at Thevmedia know that Windows XP will no longer be supported starting from April 8th, 2014. Newer service packs will be released until that moment, then we stop. If any issues are discovered after this date, we will automatically update every system with hotfixes. Do you understand? This is what this service pack did to Windows XP: * The folder "Recent" was removed because it could take up too much space (any option and text related to Recent was removed or altered). * Windows Catalog was removed from the start menu. * Any empty folders or files that are not used by the operating system was removed. * Internet games was removed from the start menu and is no longer included. * Program Manager was reverted to the SP1 version. * The Registry Editor's folder icons were changed to the XP ones. * Support for several slow Fujitsu notebooks and overrated computer screens were dropped. Thevmedia XP Service Pack 5.5 :Note: This service pack is actually meant to be called Thevmedia XP Service Pack 6, but Thevmedia nowadays skips this number because Internet Explorer 6 uses that number and it got criticism. The same text document from the previous service pack was included. And, just like any Thevmedia-branded service packs, it was only released in Yurka. The following changes were done: * Internet Explorer 6, Outlook Express and Windows Messenger are no longer included. * The option to search online using "Search" was removed. Windows Media Player 9 was like, previous service packs, included by default, but this time it was the Limited Edition. The following changes were done: * Musical Colors is still included by default, but does not have these visualizations: ** Soft Fire ** Silky Wave ** Hard Rock ** Blue Flame ** Night Lights ** Aurora ** Electric Green ** CutOut ** Ice Crystals ** WMP7 "WinMe 3D" was removed. It isn't listed in WMP8, but has a line for it. ** The two Work in Progress visualizations (not listed) were removed from the wmpvis.dll file. * Battery, Ambience and Alchemy are not included. * Even with advanced tools, it is impossible to add downloaded skins and visualizations. The exception is if the skin or visualization was made by Microsoft or if it is an official Microsoft skin. * The following visualizations were changed: ** Particle: Rotating Particle was removed. ** Plenoptic: Random, Vox, Flame, Fountain and Spyro were removed. The latter three were removed because they were boring, Vox because it looked blurry and was slow and Random because two visualizations cannot appear randomly. ** Bars and Waves: Bars are now always purple. Ocean Mist and Scope were removed. ** Spikes: Spike has returned to red. Amoeba was changed to always be red. * The option to display the menu bar at the top of the media player was removed. * The media player is always green, but has red, blue and yellow too. The user can also choose purple and cyan. Color Chooser was removed. * The skin chooser was changed. ** Revert was removed. ** compact lost the Windows logo and a few other "useless" features. Thevmedia XP Service Pack 6 There is no information about this one. When we are able to get some information about this service pack, we will add it here. Thevmedia XP Service Pack 7 There is no information about this one. When we are able to get some information about this service pack, we will add it here. Thevmedia XP Service Pack 8 * The cursor shadow was removed, including the ability to activate it. Thevmedia XP Service Pack 9 There is no information about this one. When we are able to get some information about this service pack, we will add it here.